The Propaganda Beast Is in a Doom Loop

The propaganda beast is weakening in its ability to create the illusion of power for the sea beast.

If that sounds cryptic to you, we’re looking at the beasts of Revelation 13 as either symbols or pretty accurate metaphors for what we’re seeing. In short, the beast coming up out of the sea, or sea beast, is what we also call the worldwide cabal, the whore of all the earth, the great and abominable church, the deep state, secret combinations, or simply evil corruption for power. This beast is controlled by the dragon—Satan—which means it is powered by evil and has evil intent.

The second beast, on the land, is a false-speaking beast, and it is also controlled by the dragon. It supports or creates the illusion of power for the sea beast. I call this land beast the propaganda beast. It is made up of news media, entertainment media, academia, government and business entities—all of which create a narrative, or image, that supports the power elite.

from the Dürer Apocalypse woodcut "The Beast with the Lamb's Horns
and the Beast with Seven Heads," this segment found here

With that brief primer behind us, what I think we’re seeing is both the weakening of the sea beast (which I wrote about here) and the weakening of the propaganda beast to make us think the power elite still have power.

I’m observing what I’m seeing now, not predicting what will happen next week or next month or year. I think we’re seeing something like an illusion show, a magician, whose props fail and suddenly the trick is revealed to the audience. The people no longer believe what the magician was tricking them into believing. In a magic show, being fooled—and figuring it out—are both part of the fun. But in real life, when we didn’t consent to the deception, we’re just being lied to. And it’s a good thing to recognize the deception and awaken to the truth.

So, what am I seeing? A lot of what other people are seeing as well. Mainly this is about the news media, which has enjoyed some decades of control over what we the people believe. Until the internet. Now there are other voices we can go to.

 

The Broken Shards Piece

There was an Axios piece this week, trying to describe what’s happening, albeit from their view as one of the narrative controllers. In “Behind the Curtain: The big media era is over” by Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, October 28, 2024, the authors describe a broken shards scenario: our news sources used to be solid glass panes that we all saw fairly equally. Now there are a multitude of diverse “shards,” and we all get a different combination of sources. They explain:

The big picture: When we speak around the country, we often tell audiences that when you're sitting at a table of people of different ages and politics, several of them probably get their information on platforms you've never visited ... from popular influencers you've never heard of ... on topics that might seem exotic or totally new.

They’re looking mainly at how this affects the presidential campaigns:

Former President Trump reached way more potential male voters with his three-hour Rogan conversation (33 million views over the weekend) than he could have with a dozen or more appearances on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC combined. All three cable news networks skew very old in viewership, with median ages ranging from 67 to 70.

They give a list of podcasts, etc., that Kamala Harris has gone to, and that I literally have not heard of:

·        A Nueva Network radio interview with Stephanie “Chiquibaby” Himonidis aimed at a young Latino demographic.

·        “All the Smoke” NBA-focused podcast aimed at young Black men.

·        “The Shade Room” culture podcast aimed at young Black women.

·        “Club Shay-Shay” podcast with NFL player Shannon Sharpe, aimed, I assume at Black men.

There was also the "Who's Your Daddy" podcast, an explicit sex discussion, which Kamala deemed important while Hurricane victims in North Carolina were without power or without homes. I hadn't heard of this before she did it, but I had heard of it before reading the Axios piece.

There’s a list of some more obscure places Trump has been as well, also many of which I had previously been unaware of, but as well as many I’ve long known. A difference the article might have noted but didn’t was that Trump’s schedule has been packed, and has included many larger rallies, and he talks at each of these as a real, authentic person. Meanwhile, most of Kamala’s scheduled days (which are publicly accessible) show her taking days to prepare for each one. She keeps them brief. She says essentially the same things over and over, often claiming things that are provable lies. Her campaign is counting on these people seeing only news that is curated with the power elite’s narrative.

Her brief attempt at “crossing the aisle” with Fox News’ Bret Baier did not go well for her. She failed to answer direct questions that should have been the “of course” anticipated questions. She circled around. And this was after arriving late for the interview and then cutting it short—which we now also know about her and her handlers. Trump has been willing to talk with people of opposing views, as long as it’s a real conversation and not an attack pile-on. So he has actually reached more people who didn’t previously know him except the way the propaganda beast had labeled him. 

After the Harris campaign called all the attendees at the MSG 
event racist Nazis, someone showed yet another Babylon Bee
satire that becomes actual news, this one from July. 

Axios is also wrong to call Joe Rogan right-wing. He had never been anything of the sort—until he told his actual personal experience with Ivermectin after having COVID, and got cancelled. Which led to the rise of Rumble (a non-censoring platform), where Rogan’s viewership far eclipses the network news sources put together. People who watched Rogan’s interview with Trump—for three hours—saw that Trump was personable, interesting, well-versed on many topics, interested in the person he was talking with, and by extension interested in a whole lot of regular Americans. And he is clearly not Hitler.

My favorite line—this was in reference to environmental damage caused by offshore windmills—was, “I’d like to be a whale psychiatrist.” The Rogan interview with VP candidate J. D. Vance is out, and I’m interested in watching it later today. Vance, by the way, has been a force in taking on the media. He has the facts at the ready, remains unruffled, and does it with aplomb. This belies the “he’s weird, mean, and angry” depiction of him proffered by the propaganda beast.

The meme was shared on the Viva & Barnes Sunday livestream October 27, 2024

Back to that article. Here’s how you know Axios isn’t about truth. They say:

Threat level: When attention is scattered across scores of shards, it’s easier to propagate conspiracy theories and manipulate “news.” It’s way harder to catch Russian misinformation campaigns when they are unleashed inside a dozen different information bubbles.

What they mean is, it’s much easier to manipulate “news” when you control the whole pane of glass than when you can’t control all those shards. And, by the way, while Russia is willing to put out disinformation on a whim, their efforts have not been a force in our elections. But there are supposed Russian misinformation campaigns that have:

·        Trump colluded with Russia—an invention of the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC, for which they were fined but were otherwise not held accountable. Based on this invention, they spied on Trump before and after he was in the White House. The media elites went along with it, and Axios apparently still wants to push it as true.

·        Hunter Biden laptop—claimed by 51 former intelligence officers to have had all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation, even though at the time the FBI had it in their possession and had already authenticated it. Information was censored from social media platforms. Accurate information about this could have meant a 17% swing in the election away from Biden.

Axios predicts that the outcome of the election could slow the movement toward broken up media if Harris wins: “she and her staff are much closer—and responsive—to traditional media.” But if Trump wins, the shift toward more “shards” will accelerate.

 

The Doom Loop of Distrust in Media

There was an opinion piece in Bloomberg a week ago talking about the distrust of institutions in general, and the media in particular. Alas, if only we could go back to the days of Walter Cronkite, when he would said, “And that’s the way it is,” and people believed it really was—even when it was not.

This same week Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, put out a piece explaining (?) why his WaPo decided not to endorse in elections, starting suddenly now—as part of an effort to bring back trust in media, to make it appear less biased. Here’s something accurate from his piece:

In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress. But in this year’s Gallup poll, we have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working.

What is not working is feeding us propaganda and trying to get us to believe it as fact. Bezos uses the analogy of an election:

Voting machines must meet two requirements. They must count the vote accurately, and people must believe they count the vote accurately. The second requirement is distinct from and just as important as the first.

Likewise with newspapers. We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement.

You know how not to get people to believe your machines count accurately? Let them be connected to the internet when that is illegal. Have counting stop because of “leaking pipes in the building” and then have a sudden inexplicable jump in numbers for one particular side. Refuse to allow observation during the counting. Change rules at the last minute, always in favor of less security. Refuse to allow forensic examination of ballots. Refuse to do signature verification. OK, we could go on and on with that; they tried them all in 2020, and mostly got away with them. What you need to be believed is to follow strict rules, be totally transparent, and have people from opposing sides observe at every step. What doesn’t work is telling people they’re election deniers when they call out your errors and your obfuscation.

That goes as well for the media. If they had a long record of being accurate, they would be believed. They’re failing on the first requirement, and that’s why they’re failing on the second. It seems obvious.

In reaction to both these three pieces in Axios, Bloomberg, and WaPo, the Badlands News Brief (a somewhat Q-related group of writers—this one by Burning Bright—reacting to things in the news) offered this (highlights are mine):

Our Take: The picture would be worth a thousand words, but Amazon owner and self-described elite Jeff Bezos did us one better, and actually WROTE 1,000 words to defend his decision to NOT interfere in an election.

This comes on the heels of Op eds that have been flooding the Info War over the course of the last week, wherein the screeching communist harpies that have decreed themselves official narrative-setters for the entire country realize with mounting dread and panic that they've lost complete control of the story, which, as I have been saying for over two years, IS the war.

Bloomberg actually referred to the media death spiral as a "doom loop," while Axios put it so directly in their own panic piece, it could have been written by an Anon: "the mainstream media's dominance in narrative and reality-shaping in presidential elections shattered in 2024."

Now, we have Bezos being swarmed by the very communist worker bees he once lorded over.

In Game Theory, chaos begets control.

Enjoy it. — Burning Bright

The propaganda beast has "lost complete control of the story." Indeed. 

I came upon this podcast yesterday (literally hadn’t heard of it before, although she’s conservative and has been around for a while). I think it was linked in an email. Tracy Beanz, for UncoverDC,  is responding to the Jeff Bezos op-ed. When Bezos says, “Something we are doing is clearly not working,” Beanz responds,

Yes. Let me tell you what it is. You’re lying to people, continuously, over and over again, every single day. And people, given that they have ways to get information now that are not you, are figuring it out. They don’t want to be propagandized anymore. They don’t want to be spoken down to anymore. They want the truth of what’s going on in the world around them so that they can make informed decisions.

What you’re doing wrong is that you became a fifth branch of the intelligence community for the United States government, and it’s the intelligence community that has been weaponized against the people of America in favor of, I guess you could call it, a globalized campaign to destabilize this country from within. And you, unbeknownst to you or not—and I cannot imagine how you couldn’t realize it, unless you were that retarded (excuse my French)—have just gone along with it hook, line, and sinker. And for a long while it worked. It stopped working at around 2015. And the snowball has just continued to roll down that hill since then.

She’s right about the lying. Is her assessment of the media being an intelligence arm of the US government? I’m not sure that’s how I would word it—intelligence arm. It is definitely a propaganda tool of the US government—or more precisely, of the global elite cabal that currently runs the US government: the sea beast.

It caught my attention that she says this all stopped working around 2015. She may be right. I had been thinking 2020, when the COVID shenanigans, on top of the election shenanigans, were just too obvious to ignore. But maybe it was even earlier, once we all got on the Internet. 

Anyway, there’s more evidence of the doom loop underway.

 

The Times and Tucker

A week before the election, Tucker Carlson (among others) received an inquiry from the New York Times, essentially asking him to be shamed into admitting he is at fault for not agreeing with the propaganda beast’s narrative. I got this from Tom Woods’s daily email, which even improves upon Tucker’s response, so I’ve included his before and after comments.

Tom Woods: Evidently a number of right-of-center influencers, including Tucker Carlson, just received a very similar ominous note from the New York Times.

I want to share that note, along with Carlson’s response, because it is an important lesson in how an institution like the Times is to be handled.

 

Tom Woods: So a week before the election, the Times is colluding with the crazies at Media Matters to try to shut down dissident voices.

Carlson's response was exactly right. Do not engage with these people as if they are acting in good faith, or in the hope that if you're reasonable and forthcoming, they have to treat you fairly. They don't have to do anything.

More people are going to see Carlson's response than will see the New York Times hit piece. (This is why they hate the Internet.)

Indeed, they hate the internet; it is so hard to control all of us with our varied voices and opinions. And they prefer control.

Almost daily, Dan Bongino says (I’m paraphrasing), “No matter how much you hate the media, you don’t hate them enough.” Hate is a strong word—for individual people. It is not too strong a word to use for the propaganda beast—an entity made up of many weak humans unwilling to stand for truth, but willing to lie for power, prestige, influence, or something else the dragon knows is their weakness.

 

Other Signals

As the Axios piece points out, there’s an election the media is focused on. What an inconvenient time for the media not to have the force it used to have. Granted, there’s not much for them to work with. The whole “Trump is Hitler” thing just isn’t working—because, as you might surmise by now, the media is lying about that along with everything else they lie about.

In fact, they’re so predictable at their lies, that the Babylon Bee made it a meme back in July (see above).  

This doesn’t stop them from doubling down on what’s not working.

And for some reason the media elites can’t seem to grasp, people don’t like being called racists and Nazis (all 100,000 New Yorkers who were inside and outside of the Madison Square Garden Trump rally), deplorables (that was Hillary, shortly before she lost), and garbage (Biden this week about all Trump supporters).

from the Madison Square Garden rally, top, pro-Israel and
pro-American, whom they call Nazis, compared to a Harris rally, bottom,
with Palestinian flag, but no pro-American anything; image from a Facebook story;
original source appears to be @naz_hashem and drsheilanazarian

One of the tools bringing down this propaganda beast has been mocking and meme-smithing. The Babylon Bee could be considered cultural heroes. But there are many unsung warriors. They took what were intended to be campaign-killing moments and turned them into inspiring images.

There was the iconic mugshot—representing Trump as the target to keep them from getting to the rest of us. There was the iconic “Fight! Fight! Fight!” right after Trump was shot, when they only grazed his ear, instead of leaving us without a candidate (their wish; whether it was planned with the assassin or not). Then came that happy few minutes of Trump working at McDonald’s, mocking Kamala for claiming she had worked there as a teen, although there’s no evidence she ever did. Then, after Biden called all of us “garbage,” Trump showed up as a garbage collector. Separately, any these makes a pretty iconic meme. Together, they show the power of images—something the opposition just can’t seem to muster this season.

collage found on Tom Glass's Facebook

"A campaign is snapshots and soundbites"—another Dan Bongino quote.

The Harris/Walz campaign has the full power of the propaganda beast at their disposal. But they can’t manage anything but humiliating snapshots and soundbites. The Trump team occasionally just takes clips of Kamala speaking, without editing, and adds simply, “I’m Donald Trump, and I approve this message.” The more we hear her, the less likely we are to vote for her.

Meanwhile, Trump and Vance come up with more positive snapshots and soundbites every day.

There’s some delight in seeing the “doom loop,” or death spiral, of the propaganda beast—it’s failure to create the illusion of power for the evil cabal—timed for this point in history, just before the election. After years of feeling oppressed, this feels hopeful.

That doesn’t mean I can predict the election outcome. My sense is that Trump could win, and maybe win big. But the evil cabal will cheat. We must win so big—and so widespread across the electoral college map—that they can’t cover the gap.

And then, what about when they protest, possibly even violently, against us “garbage” patriots? I don’t know. But, if I’m right and the propaganda beast is losing its power, then it will no longer be able to create the illusion that the sea beast (evil cabal) has power. Babylon falls in an our (Revelation 18:10, 17, 19). That’s how the story goes in Revelation. Those beasts are defeated. After all we can do, Christ the King—whom Kamala blithely declared not welcome at her rally last week; you should look for Him at the Trump rally—yes, Jesus Christ the Redeemer comes in and fights our battles.

That’s how the story ends. I do not know for certain where we are in the story. I only know that the sea beast may be beyond its reign over us, and it looks like that supporting propaganda beast is losing its voice. That may make them seem more fierce, temporarily. We shall see. We live in interesting times.

Is the Tide Turning?

I didn’t write last week about the conviction of President Trump on 34 felony counts of letting his accountant assign legal expenses as legal expenses in his ledger. There are plenty of people responding to that.

But I’m wondering about the fallout of the lawfare attacks. Are people realizing what has been going on? Are they waking up and rejecting the overlords? And—is this bigger than just the US presidency? Is it worldwide?

Here are some evidences that the tide might be turning back toward freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

 

El Salvador

Tucker Carlson interviewed the president of El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele: “President Nayib Bukele: Seeking God’s Wisdom, Taking Down MS-13, and His Advice to Donald Trump” Tucker Carlson.

President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele
screenshot from here

In the interview, it is right after an inauguration. But I gather it is his reelection; he has had two or three years to make progress. And the progress has been significant. As President Bukele says, you have to start with peace—get rid of unrest from war, from civil war, from crime. And once you have peace, to walk around freely, to have your rights respected, then you can work on quality-of-life things: infrastructure, economics, developing resources.

When he started out, El Salvador was the murder capital of the world. It was full of cartels, gangs, drug lords, violent criminals. Now, in three years, it has become the safest country in the Western hemisphere.

The US has a murder rate of 6 per 100,000 population. El Salvador has a rate of 2. It is literally three times safer than the US. It’s safer than Canada, safer than Chile, safer than Europe.

Tucker Carlson asks, how did they do it? What lessons are there for the rest of us? Bukele says the transformation happened in just a couple of weeks. They built up the police. They used the army to fight crime, equipping them with needed weapons, vehicles, drones, whatever was needed.

There were about 70,000 gang members, creating terror by random killing—with 6 million targets. It took a miracle—a lot of prayer that civilian casualties would be as low as possible. They did it without any civilian casualties. There were eight casualties among police and military. But they made 70,000 arrests. There were an additional 500,000 collaborators, but they spared them, because most of them were just trying to survive while being pressured by the gangs. Getting the 70,000 murderers off the streets meant essentially crime was completely eradicated.

MS-13 is a satanic group, he says. So it took a miracle from God to fight them. That is not hyperbole. One story he told was of a gang member, in prison now, who left the gang. He had been casual about killing; he didn’t know how many, 10 or 20. But then they had him in a room where they were ceremonially killing a baby. He asked what they were doing, and they told him the Beast had asked them to do it. That crossed a line even for that hardened murderer.

The real battle is between good and evil.

Tucker asks the question, why, if a country has the means to shut down crime, why would it not do so?

We’re wondering that question here locally. Crime is high. Violent criminals are put back out on the streets. Even the liberal DA was pushing back, because things had crossed a line for her. So the Democrats put up a let-out-all-the-criminals-out extremist to replace her.

Out here in the relative safety of the suburbs, we don’t have a lot of theft—unless you leave your car out of the garage or fail to have a security system. We can still safely walk the streets. But maybe it’s best not to do that at night. It’s not downtown Chicago (or even downtown Houston). But it’s not El Salvador either.

Once there is peace, then the next step is economic—to raise the standard of living. We should be watching how they do.

 

Argentina

The conservative president of Argentina, Javier Milei, did an interview with Ben Shapiro: “On the Front Lines of Freedom | President of Argentina, Javier Milei” Sunday Special, Ben Shapiro, The Daily Wire April 14, 2024.

President of Argentina, Javier Milei
screenshot from here

As Ben Shapiro tells us in his introduction, Milei is “an economist by profession and a maverick by nature.” His approach is libertarian, in a nation that has been dominated by populists and socialists. He has been a popular interviewee on economic issues since 2018, and hosts his own radio show, “Demolishing Myths.” His presidency is new; he was elected November 19, 2023, winning in a landslide election with the highest percentage of the vote in the history of Argentina as a democracy.

As Shapiro tells us,

In his victory speech, Milei promised the reconstruction of Argentina and an end to its economic decline in a new era. Since taking office President Milei has lowered the number of ministries from 18 to 9, deregulated the Argentine economy, and slowed inflation in the country.

Early in the interview President Milei explains the plan they undertook, and its almost immediate results:

We announced a zero deficit program, an adjustment in order to no longer have a fiscal deficit and to stop the issuing on the treasury front. We started also to clean up the balance sheets of the central bank to bring down the ten points of GDP in relation to the central bank. And at the same time as there was a currency gap of 200%, we introduced a staged correction to try and reduce the gap. And we were hoping that zero deficit would be achieved during 2024 at some point. All analysts predicted that would be impossible to achieve. And we basically succeeded in doing that within a single month.

A single month! They made the largest fiscal adjustment in human history, according to the IMF. They adjusted their central bank, taking a fiscal deficit of 10 percentage points of GDP down to 4. Within three months they made an adjustment amounting to 12 points of GDP.

Inflation in December 2023 had been at 25%. It dropped to 20% in January, and plummeted to 13% in February. March, a complex month (end of a quarter), would be around 12.5%, but they hope to quickly bring it down into single digits.

How has he done this? President Milei explains a change in the Argentine people. The usual politician asks for your vote to give the politician more power. They are asking for votes to give people control over their own lives, to give them back their freedom—as he puts it, “to be the architect of your own destiny.” This required a change in attitude among the people, a change that has been coming for some time.

And, mainly, they have succeeded “by embracing the values of the West, which means embracing the ideas of the Founding Fathers of the United States.” He explains that Argentina’s original constitution, drafted mainly Juan Bautista Alberdi back in 1853, was patterned after the US Constitution. When it was implemented in 1860, Argentina went from a backwater to becoming a leading world power. Those principles lead to prosperity. He says,

In fact, the 1000 reforms we sent to Congress in the first month, if all of them were to stand, to remain effective, Argentina would climb up 90 spots in terms of economic fame.”

He thinks they would be comparable to Germany, given a couple of decades. That’s with 1000 reforms. They still have another 3,000 to put forward. A better model, he thinks, is Ireland, which went from being the poorest European country to, within a few decades, achieving GDP 50% higher than that of the United States.

A Reuters article, “IMF staff, Argentina agree loan review to help unlock $800 million” May 13, 2024, verifies President Milei’s positive report: 

Milei's plan "has resulted in faster-than-anticipated progress in restoring macroeconomic stability and bringing the program firmly back on track," the IMF said. It cited also important work to protect vulnerable groups given "the backdrop of a contraction in economic activity."

 

European Parliament

European parliament votes went conservative this week. According to a Brookings commentary, “The European Parliament elections have upended French politics,” summarizes the situation thus: “The far-right is now the premier political force in France.”  What do they mean by far right? They mean, as Democrats in the US use the term, anyone slightly more conservative than extreme liberals. They use the phrase “far right” to scare people into thinking such mild conservatives are jack-booted thugs who may show up at your door at any moment in full-on Nazi fashion.

European Parliament results, chart found here

In a response to the Brookings article, Ashe in America, in a Badlands Media Brief (scroll down to this story) tells us MAGA is bigger than America; it’s worldwide:

MAGA is a global movement. The idea that each nation preserve and protect its people, traditions, culture, and history is the hearts’ cry of our current political moment—globally.

As evidence, he brings up this quote from the article:

‘RN [Rassemblement National, or National Rally party] has completely appropriated much of the vocabulary traditionally reserved to the left (a new move by the far right in France, but one that the MAGA wing of the U.S. Republican Party has frequently used). This is upending and fundamentally restructuring French politics.’

Words, apparently, matter. We’ve been in a war of words, or ideas—as every war is, even underneath a kinetic war. Maybe we’re beginning to prevail. As Ashe in America sums up: “Deconstructing their narratives and forcing a principled stance on Rights is working.”

 

Summary

There are other nations that show the worldwide movement toward freedom, prosperity, and civilization. Italy elected such a leader; I hope she can succeed. There are a couple of European leaders, interviewed I think by Tucker Carlson (or possibly Jordan Peterson), who are reliably conservative—and religious. (I should have kept notes, because I can’t recall who they are right now.)

What surprised me in the stories today was the speed with which things can change. You lock up 70,000 criminal gang members, and the country goes from murder capital to safest place. You get rid of unnecessary government ministries, and debt and inflation plummet, while GDP rises—almost overnight.

If the Beast of Revelation, or Babylon the whore of all the earth, is that ugly tyranny we’ve been battling in its various murderous forms, then we are seeing that it can be overcome quickly:

“Alas, alas, that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate.”—Revelation 18:19

In the end, it will be Christ’s return the demolishes the evil. But in the meantime, we can follow His principles to do our part. Wherever we follow the principles of freedom, prosperity, and civilization, we see blessings can come very quickly.

 

Additional Things I’ve Noticed That Show Things May Be Changing:

·       “Survey: Voters Are Increasingly Rejecting Lies of Gender Ideology” Katherine Hamilton, Breitbart, June 12, 2024  

·       “Catherine Herridge identifies 'most important 10 seconds' of special counsel's remarks after Hunter Biden conviction” Chris Enloe, The Blaze, June 12, 2024  “we have additional trials and investigative work to be done” 

·       Catherine Herridge’s X post 

·       “Forget ‘Never Trumpers’—More Voters Now Say They’ll Never Vote For Biden” Robert Schmad, Daily Caller, May 18, 2024 

·       “‘My Goodness’: CNN Data Guru Breaks Down How Bad Biden Is Doing With Black Voters” Harold Hutchison, Daily Caller, May 17, 2024 

·       “Who’s really calling the shots in the Biden administration?” Stephen B. Presser, The Blaze, June 11, 2024 

·       “Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping” Annie Linskey and Siobhan Hughes, Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2024 

·       “‘Biggest Mistake Of My Life’: Biden 2020 Voters Explain Why They’re Backing Trump In 2024” Mary Lou Masters, Daily Caller, May 17, 2024 

Censor, Indict, Execute

Tucker Carlson, in his December 18, 2023, podcast, talked with Seth Dillion, head of The Babylon Bee, a parody news site, with a subtitle, "Fake News You Can Trust." I love The Bee. They’re not only funny; they’re also, sometimes accidentally, more accurate than the mainstream news. It’s especially funny when they get fact checked, as though the story were real—because reality is so bizarre, it’s hard to exaggerate enough to satirize it.

The Babylon Bee's front-page headlines online today (January 18, 2024)

The Bee got taken down from Twitter, shortly before Elon Musk bought the company. They had responded to the real news of biological male Rachel Levine being named the Time Magazine Woman of the Year, by naming this biological male the “Man of the Year.” This was considered hate speech, and a violation of community standards by Twitter. It was, in fact, an incentive for Elon Musk to make the purchase and make an effort to restore freedom of speech.

The Babylon Bee's tweet image, found here

In their discussion, Dillon and Carlson were talking about who you’re allowed to criticize or mock, and who you’re not. Dillon was mainly talking about comedy, and then speakers on college campuses. And then Tucker got a little more serious.

SD: It has nothing to do with being offended. This whole thing, you know, the hypersensitive, the people getting up in comedians’ faces, or charging the stage to slap them in the face if they make a joke they don’t like, the, you know, “Don’t bring your speaker to our campus, because we need a safe space here, and this will offend people.” They’re not— It’s all fake outrage. Because they’ve learned that fake outrage can be used as a tool to bludgeon you into silence and submission.

TC: That’s exactly right. If they would censor you, they would kill you. Period. You don’t censor a peer, another citizen, another human being. You censor your slaves. You censor someone you consider less than human. So, if censorship doesn’t work, they’d indict you. If that doesn’t work, they would kill you. It’s just a very obvious continuum.

Tucker makes a strong point here. They think of you as lesser, not worth respecting. And if you are interfering with their agenda in some way, they think they are justified in eliminating the interference.

We’ve seen it before.

I recently reread a youth novel, Echo, by Pam Muñoz Ryan (in preparation for my private book club with my grandson). The story is divided into three distinct segments. The first takes place in pre-WWII Germany. A boy, Friedrich, lives with his father, who is taken by the Nazis to a hard labor camp, because he has the wrong ideas. He is a musician and has invited longtime musician friends to form a chamber string ensemble. One is a Jew. Another is a Nazi, it turns out. He refuses to play until the Jew is expelled. Friedrich’s father tries to point out that music is their shared interest; can’t they let their differences go? But the Nazi refuses, and turns in Friedrich’s father as a Jew lover. That is enough to get one “cancelled” in that culture.

Friedrich has an older sister, who had been away at nursing school. During that absence, she has become totally loyal to the state. It’s hard to determine if those are her deeply held beliefs, or beliefs she has adapted out of expediency and necessity to advance in her career. But it becomes impossible for the family to speak or write anything to her that might show their former disagreement. She does take some risk later to help rescue her father (with a bribe), so maybe she wasn’t totally brainwashed.

While the book is fiction, it is based on a real time and place. The threats of silencing, indicting (using the law to incarcerate), and even execution were very real.

 

Seth Dillon, of The Babylon Bee, talks with Tucker Carlson
screenshot from here

Tucker and Dillon spend some time talking about the direction of power. The silencing of someone for hate speech is presented as someone bullying the marginalized, or with less power. You’re only allowed to punch up. Punching down is not fair, or moral. So those in power use this assumption against people; it’s their way of wielding power. We’re supposed to think of someone like Rachel Levine, who went through private schooling and a privileged life, who holds one of the highest positions of power in the government as US Assistant Secretary for Health, as someone downtrodden and marginalized. That’s hard to stomach. Such a person—with all that power—does something that is supposed to make all the difference: present themselves as the gender they biologically are not. And if we object, or even laugh, that power hammers down on us.

As Tucker and Dillon point out in their conversation, someone who can have someone cancelled for making a joke about them or criticizing them in any way is the person with the power.

Here is an off-the-top-of-my-head list (likely incomplete) of the groups, people, or ideas that you’re not allowed to mock or criticize:

·        Trans people (people who present as a gender not aligned with their biology)

·        Homosexuals

·        Blacks

·        Marxists (for example, Black Lives Matter)

·        Elites (by education, money, fame, or government authority)

·        Muslims

·        Palestinians

·        Obamas

·        Bidens

·        Clintons

·        Feminists

·        Pro-Abortionists

·        Medical experts aligned with Big Pharma

The elites deciding on this list and cancelling people for not aligning with their agenda are not the marginalized; they are the power-mongering tyrants.

Here’s the list of people they give permission to marginalize:

·        Christians (particularly Catholics and Latter-day Saints, who believe they have divine authority)

·        Jews

·        Conservatives

·        Constitutionalists

·        Trump and Trump voters/supporters

·        Whites

·        Males

·        Asians

·        Large families (probably 3+ children)

·        Stay-at-home mothers

·        Parents who speak up at school board meetings

·        Pro-lifers

·        COVID skeptics

·        Vaccine hesitant

·        Election Integrity concerned

You get the idea.

Back in 2015 I wrote about the many ways the Obama administration had labeled people like me as domestic extremists. Apparently being a good citizen is extreme. I think the label now is not just extremist, but domestic terrorist, thus the many SWAT raids on harmless citizens. 

Seth Dillon admits that, truthfully, he would prefer Twitter prison to real prison any day. But they did make a sacrifice as a company. They could have deleted the Tweet and been reinstated. But Dillon said he didn’t think they should have to. It was an admission that they had been hateful and in violation—when a great many haters and evil people are allowed to stay on the platform. It was wrong to give in. But it was, clearly, not a good business decision. Twitter had been a source for a lot of their traffic, and that was lost.

They have soldiered on, which I appreciate. I get them in my inbox, and never spent much time on Twitter (pretty much only to find Tucker Carlson), so I actually see more of them than ever. Add to that their sister publication, Not the Bee, which shares news so ludicrous you can’t believe it’s not satire.

We need to stand up and speak truth. The hope is, if enough of us stand up to the censorious tyrants, they will not be able to silence us all. If we can defeat them at the censoring stage—before they move on more than they already have to the indicting/imprisoning stage—then maybe we can altogether prevent the execution stage.

What We Know Now, Three Years Later

We just passed the third anniversary of what we are told was the worst attack on our country since Pearl Harbor, maybe since the Civil War. You know, that time hundreds of thousands of Americans attended a peaceful rally at the Capitol, and a few got out of hand, but they killed no one. Except, there was an unarmed young woman shot by Capitol police. And another woman was apparently beaten to death, but they blamed it on drugs to cover the facts. And zero officers or anyone else was killed by the protesters, but an officer who died the next day of unrelated natural causes was spun as a beating death by protesters. You remember that one? That really big lie?

Patriots gathered on January 6, 2021
screenshot from here

There were some things we knew within days, or at least a short time after that J6 2021 event. I wrote a piece on January 14, 2021, which I think stands up fairly well. Estimates of a million attendees have been reduced. I don’t know how many there really were, but at least several hundred thousand. The officer said to have died by being beaten was not. Officer Sicknick was fine all that day; he died the following day of a heart attack, which medically seems unrelated. There was an additional death of a woman in the crowd, Rosanne Boyland, that was not a medical event, but more likely a beating by some officers (other officers and crowd members tried to rescue her). But I wrote this conclusion to that piece, and I think it’s basically still proving true:

Based on what I’ve pieced together, I have what I think happened. I think the President called patriots to Washington to encourage the legislature to protest the electoral votes in the states known to have voting results that should not have been certified before the evidence was considered. I think a million people showed up to support him in doing that very thing. I think bad actors saw this as an opportunity to do damage to Trump and to his supporters. These include agent provocateurs, possibly Antifa and BLM, and also Pelosi and/or others who left the Capitol vulnerable, possibly by coordinating with those APs.

Several news outlets—the independent conservative ones—put out pieces this week, on or near the anniversary. They corroborate my assumptions from three years ago. And they add more evidence, and show how the regime has used this event as a weapon against their political enemies (We the People).

It Was a Trap

Tucker Carlson did an interview with Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana. You might remember Higgins from a year ago when he questioned FBI Director Christopher Wray about whether there were FBI assets dressed as Trump supporters inside the Capitol building before the doors were opened to the public on January 6, 2021. It was a direct yes-or-no question. Director Wray obfuscated. Higgins said, “It should be no.” But the Director continued to claim he wasn’t allowed to divulge anything about how or when the FBI uses assets (informants, undercover agents).

Rep. Clay Higgins, R-Louisiana, asking questions of 
FBI Director Wray a year ago,
screenshot from here

Higgins didn’t ask that question in ignorance. He knew they had assets inside the Capitol before doors were opened—so they could guide the crowds to the areas where it would look like they had the most nefarious intent, such as the House Chamber or the Speaker’s office.

Here’s some of what Rep. Higgins told Tucker:

I’d seen evidence, even at that time, that the FBI had embedded themselves into various groups online, across the country, of Americans who were essentially voicing their concerns and airing their grievances with each other about COVID oppression. Those Americans were targeted by the FBI—almost universally Republicans and largely Trump supporters. But the FBI worked undercover to infiltrate those conversations and become a significant part of those individual Americans’ communications.

And when you dig into the evidence that we’ve had revealed through some criminal cases that I’ve followed, and worked with the families of J6 political detainees and Americans that have been persecuted for their involvement in the Capitol that day, some of that evidence shockingly reveals that the FBI agents that were operating undercover within the online groups across the country were the first ones to plant the seeds of suggestions of a more radical occupation of the Capitol. And they were sort of testing the waters of who amongst that group would begin acknowledging that, “You know, maybe we should do that. Maybe we should plan for an occupation like that.” But if you look at the origins of those conversations, they were started by the FBI undercover guy that was operating inside the group….

So Americans gathered at their own Capitol to appropriately air grievances and protest at their Capitol. But embedded amongst their number was an FBI asset that had been working from within their group online for many months. So this was the level of manipulative effort that the FBI invested into American citizenry and our assembly online to exercise our rights under the First Amendment, to talk to each other about whatever we want to talk about, including the insidious oppressions of COVID that we were suffering across the country.

Tucker pointed out that this is entrapment. Indeed. Later Tucker asked how many FBI assets are we talking about: 10? 20?

Rep. Higgins says no, and gives a much higher number:

No. Based upon some very conservative but, like, hard investigative effort—evaluation of the numbers, from putting together eyewitnesses, and videos and affidavit statements, and whistleblower statements, and court records that have been revealed through individual criminal cases where J6 defendants have been prosecuted and smart attorneys have forced admissions by the DOJ and the FBI. But those admissions have been sealed within the parameter of that criminal case by protective order, by the judge, so that I can’t share them, but I’ve seen them. So, real hard objective and conservative estimates would put the number of FBI assets in the crowd outside and working inside at well over 200.

Rep. Clay Higgins talks with Tucker Carlson,
screenshot from here

In that huge crowd, there was violence. And I don’t mean in any way to minimize that. But violence was the goal of the instigators. And yet, after all the persecutions and prosecutions, they’ve come up with almost no cases of violence—and zero cases of insurrection, as of last March. Robert Gouveia had gone through court records and put together a list. There may still be more cases coming, as persecutions will continue “until morale improves.”

Even among those listed cases, most would be thrown out if they were held anywhere but in a DC court, where impartial juries are about as common as unicorns. But, if I understand Gouveia's March 2023 numbers, there were a total number of 950 people (in fact, I think they hit the 1,000 mark recently) charged with a total of 1774 crimes, 90% of which are “entering the Capitol,” regardless of being invited in by police, so there was no intent to do wrong, and misdemeanor trespass is the most you could charge. Only two categories are violent, both of which could also apply to not-actually-violent or not-seriously-violent offenses (flag poles and even water bottles were considered weapons; no guns or knives were found). But we’ll count them. There are a total of 383 of these. That’s 21.6% of the total charges filed.

If we use Rep. Higgins conservative 200 figure (he believes it’s much higher), FBI assets' numbers were 21% of those 950 people charged. Not that they charged, of course. But comparing numbers, it took almost a ratio of one FBI asset for every five people they were able to urge into the Capitol or appear to do something wrong.

We don't have numbers of how many were trying to prevent the provocateurs from stirring things up. It's a safe assumption, I believe, that no violence would have taken place without the FBI’s agent provocateurs.

Fascist Oppression Stories

The Epoch Times put out a Part II of their documentary on The Real Story of January 6; it came live on the anniversary, this past Saturday. [You might want to start with Part I from July, and they have other coverage as well.] Reporter Joseph Hanneman covers a lot of stories. A number of them are what we’d call typical American patriots who are being persecuted by our government, as if we were a fascist regime. 

There’s the Munn family, five of them, parents and teenage daughters, who went to the Capitol that day, from their home in Texas. They had big questions about the nefarious elections (as we all still do) and went there to hear President Trump and voice their grievances. They were not violent. They got caught up in a crowd moving toward and into the Capitol. They were smashed up against a window that had already been taken out. So the dad crawled through and helped the others through, and their plan was to find a safe place to wait out the storm of people, and then get out. They are being labeled domestic terrorists. Their case, at this point, is that they are on probation. They lost their jobs and have had to drive hours away to get employment. They have received death threats. So they are moving to another state, pending permission from probation officers at each end. 

They were raided by a SWAT team in the early morning, and forced out without getting any belongings or even being allowed to dress. They found later that the FBI had planted listening devices in the home, which they discovered by accident, because the devices were interfering with their internet.

This device was discovered by the Munn family in their home. Reporter
Joseph Hanneman had a former-FBI friend identify it.
screenshot from here

Huge resources were diverted from all other focuses of the FBI to the “domestic terrorist threat.” There were whistleblowers, who tried to go through all the proper channels, and were terminated for doing so, but their testimonies nevertheless got to Congress. They have faced loss of their careers, loss of their belongings (one was in the middle of a move, and the government confiscated his stored belongings). They reported that, while there are appropriate times for using a SWAT team, that should never happen with non-violent people, particularly people who are cooperating with investigators. And yet this is what they were being ordered to do.

There was one story of a man who was at the Capitol on J6, Ronald Colt McAbee, now held for two years, before finally getting a trial, which will be appealed. Since he was non-violent and not a flight risk, they expected him to get out on bond, but the judge rejected that request. His wife wasn’t allowed to see him or talk with him, but just recently she was able to visit him for an hour. He was a trained police officer there that day, and did what he could to prevent damage. He was one who tried to help Rosanne Boyland when she was dying. For that he was charged with obstruction or some such “danger” to the country.

J6 prisoner Colt McAbee with his wife,
screenshot from here

These cases aren’t over. By calling them domestic terrorists, the prisoners lose their rights as Americans. That’s why the designation is being used. This was intended for actual terrorists, acting as nonuniformed combatants, a designation intended for war times when enemies infiltrate as spies.

Speaking of misusing intended laws, calling this event an insurrection is a huge lie. Insurrection is making war against the country—essentially instigating civil war, trying to overthrow the government. That is what the 14^th Amendment referred to, to prevent leaders of the Confederacy from shortly afterward trying to become President of the nation they had insurrected against. What happened on January 6^th, despite the instigated violence, was the most pitiful attempt at insurrection in the history of nations. No weapons. No interference with official proceedings, even, which simply concluded later the same evening. No government officials harmed or even endangered. And even what happened seemed to have been staged—and lied about to look worse—by the Deep State.

When Tucker asked Rep. Higgins who was behind it, he said this:

The combination of several of the most extreme liberal, anti-Trump, anti-America-First factions that were in positions of authority within our federal law enforcement organizations and the Democrat party across the country.

It will be a matter of finding these factions and rooting them out. That is the only way to get our country back, because right now we are under their fascist dictatorship. Higgins points out that, even though they can recommend charges in Congress, they depend on the Department of Justice to carry out prosecutions. And the current DOJ is complicit in the whole mess.

Death That Fateful Day

There was another video this week, updating information about Ashli Babbitt. Her estate (I believe her husband and parents) have filed a wrongful death lawsuit. And it has some useful information in discovery. The video is Greg Kelly, for Newsmax, January 5, 2024. Kelly has followed this case for a while, and brings out several details from the lawsuit.

Ashli Babbitt was guided by police to the door where she was eventually killed,
screenshot from here

He showed video of Ashli, peacefully walking to the Capitol after the conclusion of the President’s speech at the ellipse near the White House. Kelly says:

First of all, you saw Ashli Babbitt on January 6th. We’ve showed you this picture before. She’s not an insurrectionist. She went to engage in well-protected First Amendment speech and to see President Trump. She was at that ellipse rally, which is peaceful, which was calm. And then with others. Yeah, she walked over to the Capitol. Walked over. It wasn’t a stampede. It wasn’t a raid. She walked peacefully to the Capitol. 

And this is new. You see, nobody knew actually how she got in there. We still haven’t seen the videotape. But we know this: She didn’t break in. She wasn’t part of a crew that broke windows and stormed in. We know this: two undercover Metropolitan Police Department officers followed close behind Ashli as she climbed the stairs to the West Terrace. Two undercover Metropolitan Police Department officers were there. Why didn’t they stop her? If she were a threat? You know what? She wasn’t a threat. 

And everybody was walking in at one point on January 6th. Ashli entered the Capitol on the Senate side long after others had done so. Once inside, according to the lawsuit, Ashli encountered a female Capitol Police officer who directed her to walk south towards the House side. And you know what? Everything I found in this lawsuit corresponds to other evidence we’ve already seen. Here’s Ashli Babbitt, walking through the rotunda, and you know what? She actually does look just like a tourist. Yeah. Peacefully. Listening to law enforcement. Following their instructions.

There’s an oddity Kelly shows video of, at the door to the House chamber, where Ashli was ultimately shot. There are three officers there, standing near the doors, protecting the House chamber from being entered. There’s a big crowd there, seeming agitated. (We’ve seen video of agent provocateurs among them before.) These three officers, “First, Officer Kyle Yetter on the left, Sergeant Timothy Lively in the middle, and Officer Christopher Lanciano on the right.” They have been ordered to guard the door. But then, with the crowd there, the three suddenly, and quite casually, leave. For a coffee break? Why?

Three Capitol Police officers who were guarding the door
left the scene just before the door window was broken.
screenshot from here

As soon as they leave, there is a guy who begins pounding on the window in the door, and breaks it. This is the window Ashli Babbitt is stepping through when she is shot and killed.

She has no weapon. She is not dangerous looking, as a trim, 5’5” female. She’s off balance, working her way through the window, with a backpack on. An officer on the inside (since the officers, who were treating her and the others outside as non-threatening, had left) could have quickly flex cuffed her, held her aside to deal with later, and dealt with anyone else who came through the window—which would have been one unarmed person at a time.

That would have been normal police procedure. But that is not what was done.

Lt. Michael Byrd is shown in video, earlier, weapon drawn while walking through the House Chamber. This is already against protocol. There is no reason at that point to have a gun drawn. The doors are locked. The House members have been evacuated. Who is he drawing his weapon to fire on? The lawsuit quotes Capitol police policy: “Firearms may be withdrawn from their holsters only when officers are preparing for its expected, prudent, and lawful discharge, to protect themselves or others from imminent death or serious physical injury.”

 

Lt. Byrd is shown on video in the House Chamber with gun drawn,
screenshot from here

Ashli Babbitt wasn’t a threat of imminent death to anyone. No one heard Byrd give any warning. No, “Stop or I’ll shoot.” Nothing.

Sometime later he sat down with Lester Holt on a news program, and, as Greg Kelly points out, probably incriminated himself.

Holt: “When you fired, what could you see? Where were you aiming?”

Byrd: You’re taught to aim for center mass. The subject was sideways, and I could not see her full motion of her hand or anything. So I guess her movement, you know, caused the discharge to fall where it did.”

He didn’t see her hands, so there was no mistaking something for a gun; he admits he saw no gun. There had been no reports of guns or weapons used elsewhere that day. There was no expectation that she would have one. And she wasn’t in a position to use one anyway. He wasn’t in imminent danger. He didn’t give warning. He used lethal force at close range, hitting her in the head. And he got praised and promoted for this act of murder.

There’s more. Byrd told investigators that there were 80-90 people he was protecting in the House Chamber; there were only about 6, all officers plus a couple of House members with military experience. So he was either woefully unaware of his surroundings or he lied.

One minute after shooting Ashli Babbitt, at 2:45 PM, according to the lawsuit, Byrd made a radio call saying this: “We got shots fired in the lobby. We got shots fired in the lobby of the House chamber. Shots are being fired at us. And we’re prepared to fire back at them. We have guns drawn. Please don’t leave that end.”

Transcript of the radio call from Lt. Byrd one minute
after shooting Ashli Babbitt,
screenshot from here

This implies that the officers were being fired upon. That is a lie. There was only one shot fired: Byrd shot Ashli Babbitt. This call makes it appear he recognized he had made a bad shoot and was trying to cover it up by claiming it was necessary in a wild shootout.

Byrd has a history of misuse of his firearm—besides once leaving it in a public restroom. Discovery in the lawsuit reveals that he fired while off duty. As Kelly tells it,

Well one day, when he was off duty, his car was stolen. According to the lawsuit, Byrd just started shooting at the car: “Lieutenant Byrd’s police powers also were revoked for a prior off-duty shooting into a stolen moving vehicle in which the occupants were teenagers or juveniles.” The stolen vehicle was Lieutenant Byrd’s car.

That’s not the way you use deadly force. Might be tempting, certainly for— But not for a law enforcement officer. You don’t start shooting at a car that was stolen. Not if you’re a professional law enforcement officer.

And then there’s this: “Lieutenant Byrd fired multiple shots at the fleeing vehicle in a suburban area. Stray bullets from Lieutenant Byrd’s firearm struck the sides of homes nearby. An official investigation found that Lieutenant Byrd’s use of force was not justified.” So we had a record of this. Yet he was still employed by the Capitol Hill police. That’s a problem.

There’s more, certainly, that could be told about J6. And eventually maybe it will be. What we thought happened three years ago, there’s more and mounting evidence for: peaceful Americans were set up to be blamed for violence; when not enough violence happened, the tyrants persecuted the peaceful Americans anyway.

We are in a fascist tyranny. We might be able to recover our country. If so, it will take some brave standing up against the bullies. And it will have to happen this year, while we still have plenty of memory of our freedoms.